Mosquitos!

[clovishound]

I'm not saying they are really, really bad this year, but this week I took out 3 of the bigger ones with my Henry .357. Game warden wanted me to tag them.



Seriously, they are the worst I have seen them in a while. Probably standing water from the storm we had roll through earlier this month. They were bad enough to chase my buddy and I from the woods last week, and we both were wearing Thermacells. I might have been OK if we had persevered on to a spot where we could sit, and the wind stayed down. Buddy was getting eaten alive and bailed. No hard frost likely until later this month, if then.

[JCN]

What part of the country are you in?

None here in Southern California, one of the benefits of living in a drought affected area...

[clovishound]

South Carolina. Mosquitoes are always a problem hunting in Oct and part of Nov. Usually, a Thermacell will keep them away. I've not seen them this bad a long time. Heck, I'm getting mugged by them just walking from the front door to my car most days. Highs are still forecast to be in the mid 80s the next couple days.

[edub3535]

I'm in NC and they are pretty bad here too. When I am perched in the stand with the Thermacell fired up I do not have any problems. Once I come down and walk back to my Jeep, even with the Thermacell on, I feel like fresh fried chicken on the buffet line. All this rain, standing water, warm weather equals to miserable conditions for mosquitoes to thrive. Just gotta suck it up and hope the deer you kill is still down and not being excorted away by the flock of skeeters before you get to it!

[Sir Henry]

We have tons of them in the mountains but few in the lower rural areas.

[biglever]

In a old Adirondack magazine , that's long gone
There was a story about the size of the black flys
And how bad they were. In the spring time , these two flys were talking too each other as they were checking out this fawn curled up in the grass, the one fly says , hay lets swoop down and pick that fawn up and take it back home.
The other fly says heck No , if we do that , our bigger brother's and sister's will take him away from us.

[tx gunrunner]

I've lived in my part of Tx for 6 summers and this was the 1st year I got bit by mosquito . Normally it is too dry here for them to breed and live here in my town . In the next town 8 mile away now they has lots of mosquito , but nowhere near the problem I had in Tn .

[Steve]

At the range the last few times the flies have just about carried me away. It seems like the only way to escape them is to find a windy spot to shoot from.

The sun was beating down on one of the shooting benches I wanted to use Sunday. The Japanese beetles driven from the harvested bean fields made me go home early, they really got bad.

[ditto1958]

Which part of the skeeter do you aim at to get one shot stops?

[clovishound]

Which part of the skeeter do you aim at to get one shot stops?

Head shots!

Went out today. We managed to make it far enough in to set up and sit for a while. The mosquitoes were bad going in, but once we sat down, the Thermacells did their job quite well. In fact, they worked so well we had about a dozen squirrels, a couple raccoons, and an otter come and sit down near us just to escape the skeeters.

We saw plenty of squirrels, didn't have my .22 with me, thought the .357 would be overkill. Saw a nice hawk, and a couple turkeys. Heard a couple coyotes. Saw plenty of deer and hog signs. All in all, a good day in the woods.

[daytime dave]

I'm glad you had a good day in the woods. I'm glad you got relief from the mosquitoes and were able to help out those critters too.

[JEBar]

the last time I hunted the swamps of eastern NC, I swatted several mosquitoes and found they had ticks on them .. !!